half-full HD slows down?

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shegeek72

In the May 2013 issue of Consumer Reports in the article, "101 Secrets fromour Experts" it states:

"If your computer hard drive is more than half full, programs and disk operations like copying and backing up will slow down, since the hard drive's heads have to move farther across the spinning disk surface as they gather data."

I'm suspicious about this statement. It seems HDs are so fast today that a 60% full HD isn't going to slow things down. Particularly if it's defraged regularly. Also, the article doesn't say how much fuller than 50%. A 90% full HD isn't going to be as efficient as one that's 55% full.

Was Consumer Reports right?
 
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In the May 2013 issue of Consumer Reports in the article, "101 Secrets
from our Experts" it states:

"If your computer hard drive is more than half full, programs and disk
operations like copying and
backing up will slow down, since the hard drive's heads have to move
farther across the spinning
disk surface as they gather data."

I'm suspicious about this statement. It seems HDs are so fast today that a
60% full HD isn't going
to slow things down. Particularly if it's defraged regularly. Also, the
article doesn't say how much
fuller than 50%. A 90% full HD isn't going to be as efficient as one
that's 55% full.

Was Consumer Reports right?
Click to expand...

Yes, although whether its 50% or 90% is open to debate.

I don't have any figures to back it up, but it is my experience that there
seems to come a point (related to how full the drive is) when performance
starts to drop off. The drive itself can be fully defragmented, but
performance still suffers. This is one reason why I now buy the largest
capacity disks that I reasonably can afford. I wouldn't expect solid state
drives to suffer in the same way.
 
Brian said:
Yes, although whether its 50% or 90% is open to debate.

I don't have any figures to back it up, but it is my experience that
there seems to come a point (related to how full the drive is) when
performance starts to drop off. The drive itself can be fully
defragmented, but performance still suffers. This is one reason why I
now buy the largest capacity disks that I reasonably can afford. I
wouldn't expect solid state drives to suffer in the same way.
Click to expand...

The platter circumference is a function of the track you're on.
Inner tracks are a "smaller circle" than outer tracks.

If you run HDTune benchmark, you can see the effect immediately.
HDTune does a sequential read benchmark.

http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/9205/st500dm002burst.gif

If you place a partition down near the end of the disk, it'll
be in the "slow part".

Paul
 
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